


uneasy in my skin (this hell is cold)

by resident_longwinded_anon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (and lucifer trauma, Aftermath of Possession, Dean's Michael Trauma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I feel like tagging this 'platonic cuddling' would be misleading, Possession trauma, Post-Possession, Post-Possession Dean Winchester, Post-Possession Sam Winchester, Post-Season/Series 13, Sam's Gadreel Trauma, a fic in which actual emotional conversations are had, and meg trauma, but there is some platonic cuddling I guess, mostly by virtue of inhibitions being lowered in the middle of the night, references to hell trauma too though that's not what the fic is about, there's just a lot of trauma)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-25 17:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30092346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resident_longwinded_anon/pseuds/resident_longwinded_anon
Summary: Sam should’ve been expecting something like this.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 16
Kudos: 28





	uneasy in my skin (this hell is cold)

**Author's Note:**

> The fact that my tumblr is long inactive and I have nowhere to babble about how BAFFLING it is to me that I'm writing fic for this fandom again means you, dear readers, get to learn all about how baffling it is to me that I'm writing fic for this fandom again. My muse is a bizarre and capricious bastard. Lately it has at least been a very vocal bastard.
> 
> This fic takes place post-13.23. I suppose one could slot it in somewhere in season 14, though I don't think it would fit anywhere very neatly, and I'd prefer to imagine that this version of Sam and Dean (and their family offscreen) don't need to deal with any of that bullshit. So, uh, AU post-s13, I guess? Just pretend I actually watched the last four seasons as they aired and I'm posting this during the 13-to-14 hiatus or something.
> 
> Title from "Devil's Been Talkin'," by NEEDTOBREATHE ([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w87T84agSRw)), a throwback to my SPN-fic titling of yore. It's a very Sam song.

Three days after they get him back, there’s a knock on Sam’s bedroom door in the middle of the night. He opens it to see Dean, hollow-eyed and tearstained. “I never said I was sorry,” he says. His voice stretches and snaps, like he’s been screaming.

Sam steps back and beckons Dean inside the room. Dean collapses to the floor at the foot of the bed. “Sorry for what?” Sam asks. He shuts the door, gently latches it - they have people not to wake, now.

Dean wraps his arms around his knees. He won’t meet Sam’s eyes. “What I... What I did to you. Gadreel.”

Oh. Sam should’ve been expecting something like this. He sits on the ground, too, leans against the door. “I forgave you for that a long time ago,” he says, as gently as he can. “You know that.”

“I didn’t realize how bad it was, before,” Dean says dully. “I didn’t know what it does to you, to feel like that. I didn’t _know_.” He’s desperate, anguished. Sam hasn’t heard him like this since Cas was dead - and at least then his anger was pointed outward.

“No,” Sam says, keeping his voice soft and slow. “You didn’t.” He swallows. “I’m sorry that you do, now.”

“I deserved it,” Dean says. His voice is hollow. He hardly sounds like himself; at least he doesn’t sound like Michael. “God, I deserve so much worse.”

“I’m not going to play that game with you,” Sam says. “I’m not going to add to your self-loathing.”

“You didn’t say you disagree with me,” Dean says, and there’s a glimmer of himself in his eyes - see, Sammy, I caught you in a lie!

Sam tilts his head back against the door. “So what? God, Dean, if we both got what we deserved we’d still be dead or worse. I stopped giving a shit about what we ‘deserve’ a long time ago.”

Dean snorts. “Must be nice.” A long pause. “I really am sorry, Sammy,” he says at last, voice gone soft. “I know it’s too little, too late, and I’m sorry for that too, but - I. Shouldn’t have done it.”

Not, Sam notes, ‘I wouldn’t do it again,’ but, well. He’s hardly in a position to throw stones on that front. “I forgive you,” he says again. “I’ve forgiven you.”

Silence, for a long time. Sam is so, so aware that the bunker is full of bodies right now, people sleeping and breathing and existing with some measure of peace, all because he and Dean have always been too stubborn and too stupid to let each other go. Was it worth it? Christ, he doesn’t know.

“Does it...” Dean won’t meet his eyes. “Does your body ever feel like your own, again?”

Sam almost laughs. Right, this was Dean’s first rodeo. Meanwhile for him, it’s been what? Twelve, thirteen years since Meg took him on that little joyride. Not, if he’s honest, that that was the start of it. “Dean,” he says, “my body has never felt like my own.”

“Oh.” Dean hugs himself tighter. “I’m sorry,” he says again, voice small.

“That one’s not even your fault,” Sam says, dry.

“I’m still sorry.”

“Thanks.”

More silence. It’s been... a while, since someone rode around in Sam’s body, but some days he still feels the slime of them all on his skin. He’s had nightmares every night since that moment in the church, when Dean wasn’t Dean anymore. He wakes up paralyzed, afraid that he’ll try to move and discover his bones belong to someone else.

“There are things I do,” Sam says into the quiet. “Stuff that... they’re called grounding techniques. Stuff that helps you stay present in your body.”

“Are you trying to head shrink me, man?”

“Honestly? Yeah,” Sam says. “A little bit. You can’t tell me you don’t need it.”

Dean’s laugh is bleak.

“It’s not hard,” Sam says, because the tasks themselves aren’t. “It’s about... engaging your senses, being present in your body. Drinking a cup of tea, focusing on its smell and its warmth. Counting the number of tiles on the floor. Reminding yourself who and where you are.”

“And that shit really works?” Dean’s skepticism is tangible.

“Sometimes.” More some days than others. “Remember...” He doesn’t like to talk about this, but there’s still so much agony in Dean’s eyes. “Remember the Leviathan? When my Hell wall broke and I went crazy?”

“I try not to.”

“I cut my hand.” He still has the scar. “I cut it, and you used the pain to bring me back. That’s a grounding technique.” Or it was, for as long as it worked.

“See,” Dean says with a wry smile, “I don’t need your help with this. I’m a natural.”

God, Sam doesn’t even remember what it feels like, to miss his agency so acutely. He wrote it off a decade ago. Dean’s mourning something he barely remembers.

“It’s like...” Dean says. “I knew I was supposed to be Michael’s vessel, but I never had to - do it, you know. There was, whaddya call it, plausible deniability. And then he just walks in and tears me away, and suddenly it’s like I’ve never even existed. Like, is any of this even real? Are you real?”

“Yes.” Sam moves so he’s sitting next to Dean, close but not touching. Dean must be even more wrecked than he’s letting on, if this much of his anguish is slipping out. Sam’s reminded of Dean perched on the hood of the Impala, tears in his eyes and wrists newly scarless and voice cracking around “forty years”: so much horror sealed so tightly it can’t help but leak at the edges. And Sam’s useless. He knows this suffering, knows it better than his own name, but he’s never solved it. It can’t be solved. It can barely be lived around.

Dean shakes with holding himself back. Slowly, carefully, Sam reaches out and takes his hand in his own scarred one. Dean flinches but doesn’t move away. “This is real,” Sam says quietly. “You’re real. I’m real. Jack and Mom and Cas are real, and asleep right down the hall. There are two dozen real people here, people you saved. We’re in our home” - Sam’s voice cracks on the word - “and we’re with our family. You are the only one in your body.”

Dean makes one horrible wrenching sound, a muffled sob that Sam pretends not to notice. Sam knows without him saying a word: it’s too hard to believe. Sam has trouble believing it himself sometimes, his thrice-resurrected family, and he’s been driving solo for years. He inches closer to Dean, so their sides are pressed together, one long line of warmth.

“If you want to move, you can,” Sam says, because he knows this fear inside and out. “This world will stay put, and nothing will stop you. There’s no one in your head but you.”

Dean manages a single, sharp shake of his head. “Keep talking,” he whispers, as if speaking too loudly will jar loose some leftover bit of Michael inside of him. “I need - distract me.”

How badly it must gall Dean, to admit this much weakness. Sam knows they’ll never speak of this conversation, that the trauma and dissociation and panic will be relegated to the middle of the night where Dean thinks they belong. Neither of them will ever acknowledge Dean’s apology again - but then, neither of them will have to.

“There are techniques I can teach you,” Sam says. “Ways to recognize when something’s in your body, ways to expel it. Stuff for angels - stuff for demons, too, and anything else that might try to possess you. I’m,” he laughs a little, “something of an expert.”

“My fault,” Dean murmurs, head drifting to rest on Sam’s shoulder. “My fault you know them.”

Slowly, carefully, Sam starts to run his fingers through Dean’s hair. “No,” he says. “No, Dean. You may have given my body away, but you didn’t hurt people with it. Lucifer, Meg, Gadreel - it’s their fault, not yours.”

Dean sighs, but doesn’t answer. Sam focuses on the warm weight of his head, the crisp crinkle of his hair; Dean’s not the only one who needs grounding, right now. Dean told him to keep talking, but he’s not sure what to say. It gets better? It doesn’t. Their bodies will only ever be the motel rooms they grew up in, transient and temporary and not really theirs. No vacancy, the sign says, but the ‘no’ is always flickering.

“Life is better,” Sam says slowly, “than I ever thought we’d have. Some days I don’t believe it either. That I have you here, and Cas. That we have Jack and Mom.” Dean’s hair is damp with sweat beneath his fingers. “I’m not going to tell you it was worth it. I can’t decide that for you. I can’t even decide that for me. But - it happened.” He’s not just talking about possession anymore. “It happened, and we’re here now. We made it through. You made it out.”

_It’s okay, Dean_ , he hears himself say, as though from a great distance. _It’s gonna be okay. I’ve got him_.

Lucifer is dead now. It’s gonna be okay. Dean got him.

“Sammy,” Dean says. He lifts his head. “You’re crying.”

Huh, he is. Sam wipes the tears away with the back of his hand.

“I’m sorry.” Dean’s wringing his hands together now, and - oh, no - “I shouldn’t have - “

“Dean.” Sam covers Dean’s hands with his own. “They’re good tears.” They’re not, or at least not exclusively, but what’s a little white lie between them? “I’m - like I said. We made it through.”

“Oh.” Dean looks down at their joined hands. He’s rapidly approaching his limit on emotional moments, Sam can tell, but he won’t just leave the room when Sam’s crying. “Thank you,” he says. “For - reminding me.”

“Reminding you of what?”

Dean squeezes his hands. “Why I did it.” He uses a corner of Sam’s shirt to wipe more tears away, then he stands to go. He pauses, hand on the doorknob. Without turning around, he says, “I hope you know, Sam... For me, it was worth it. All of it.”

He’s gone before Sam can respond. Sam has to laugh a little, even through the tears. How very Dean, to come seeking support and leave giving it. He can’t go ten minutes without being the big brother.

Sam stands, stretches, tries to revel in the feeling of his muscles flexing and yielding. This is his body today. This will be his body tomorrow.

He believes it a little more every day.

**Author's Note:**

> My rewatch was pretty choosy, especially through seasons 9 and 10, because... I don't like them very much, sorry. As such, do I actually know for certain that Dean _didn't_ apologize for the Gadreel stuff on camera? No, no I do not. However, I am virtually certain that Dean didn't _feel_ sorry for the Gadreel stuff, and that in his mind that's basically the same thing. So I feel like I can get away with "I never apologized" either way.


End file.
